It seems, once again, that it is not only the harried parent who benefits from the building of a bridge. Tangible and soul-full benefits also accrue to the young and old—even when the child is now a young adult.
Generativity
While one of us has written about soul-filling inter-generational relationships, the other [WB] has written about an important personal need that seems to undergird these soul-filled connections. This need is identified as “Generativity.” First used by Erik Erikson (1980), the noted developmental theorist, generativity refers to an important stage in the development of maturity among those of us who are in our 40s and 50s. Erikson suggests that we have a choice to make. We can be generative and seek out that about which we care most and then engage in deep caring about this cared-for entity (be it a person, a principle, a belief, an outcome).
The theologian, Paul Tillich (1984), would speak of this as that about which we have “ultimate concern.” Generativity is also about leaving something of value for future generations. We began this essay with an Indian proverb: “Blessed is he who plants tress under whose shade he will never sit.” This proverb speaks to this fundamental perspective of legacy—of “leaning into the future” (Bergquist, 2017) and “learning into the future” (Scharmer, 2016). John Kotre (1984) identifies this element of generativity as one’s “outliving of the self.”
The alternative to generativity, according to Erikson, is Stagnation. When we are stagnant, the world becomes quite constrained. We envy the success of other people rather than appreciating what they have accomplished (and acknowledge our own success). We find those of the younger generation to be rivals and recognize only the ways in which they are different from us in terms of both perspectives and practices. We hold no sense of (or hope for) the future—living mostly in the present and often living a whole lot in the past.
Generativity or Stagnation
One of us [WB] can offer an example of the distinction between generativity and stagnation that he witnessed while sitting in on a traditional jazz session in New Orleans. The featured musician was Wallace Davenport, a legendary trumpet player. The doors to this jazz venue were all open – it was a typical hot and humid evening in the Big Easy. Amplified music from a bar across the street was sometimes drowning out the music being played by Davenport and his sidemen.
At the end of the set, WB went up to Davenport and indicated that he was sad and frustrated that Davenport’s music was being “replaced” by that horrible music coming from across the street. Davenport stopped Wb at this point and said that the music emanating from across the street was fine. It represents the new era of jazz. WB took from this exchange with Wallace Davenport and suggesting that WB should learn to enjoy or at least appreciate what was being played.
What a remarkable stance. Wallace Davenport could have envied or at least dismissed this new music. He could have been irritated that the sounds coming through the open doors was making hard for his own music to be readily heard. He could have been a recalcitrant, stagnated relic of the good old times. Instead, Davenport was generative. He appreciated and supported a changing of the musical guard. We suspect that he even occasionally jammed with the young musicians across the street—or at least shared a few tricks about how to win over an audience (and perhaps how to win over an older audience). The stage was set for inner-generational dialogue—and it all begins (at least on the part of the older generation) with a strong dose of generativity.
